By Lincoln DePradine
The legacy of the late Eric R. Wickham, a revered elder and educator of the Black and Caribbean neighborhood, has been additional cemented.
A presentation, of the first-ever Eric R. Wickham Memorial Scholarship, has been made to a Centennial Faculty scholar. The winner of the inaugural scholarship is Marwa Malik.
Malik, who was formally offered with the scholarship at Centennial’s 2024 “Scholar Awards Night time’’, was congratulated by Wickham’s daughter Aisha.
“It was an honour to satisfy Marwa on the ‘Scholar Awards’ ceremony, which simply occurred to happen on Dad’s birthday,’’ stated Aisha Wickham. Her father would have been 84.
“You lived an extended and full and impactful life, however you might be nonetheless gone too quickly. I like you and miss you,’’ Aisha Wickham stated in a birthday tribute to her father.
Barbados-born Eric Wickham was knowledgeable accountant, who additionally exhibited a fervent dedication for neighborhood improvement and preserving and instructing African historical past.
At Centennial, the place he was a enterprise teacher from 1979 to 2004, Wickham additionally developed a groundbreaking basic schooling school course titled, “Historical Africa: Superb Legacies’’, which supplied an in-depth self-study of African kingdoms and Egyptian antiquity.
His household – which incorporates his spouse Emily; Aisha; his son, Olembe; and 4 grandchildren – introduced plans for the institution of the scholarship shortly after Wickham’s demise final November at Scarborough Centenary Hospital.
The household participated within the drafting of the standards for the scholarship, which is value $2,500.00.
Sudan-born Malik is a scholar within the enterprise college at Centennial. She’s finding out workplace administration, with a deal with well being providers.
“Connection to the Black neighborhood is a core tenet of the scholarship’’, stated Aisha Wickham, whose father’s “ardour was for uplifting the Black neighborhood in so many issues that he did’’.
Eric Wickham, Aisha stated, “would have been proud to know that the Wickham title was connected to such an honour at an establishment that he was proud to be related to’’.
The scholarship, she added, is a “becoming means for us to maintain dad’s title alive’’.
